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> there's nothing "responsible" at all about independent researchers disclosing information to the public only on a vendor's schedule and terms. Right, so the
by gwd 7y ago
> there's nothing "responsible" at all about independent researchers disclosing information to the public only on a vendor's schedule and terms.
Right, so the reason we disagree is that we have different understandings of what "responsible disclosure" means. From Wikipedia:
> In computer security or elsewhere, responsible disclosure is a vulnerability disclosure model in which a vulnerability or an issue is disclosed only after a period of time that allows for the vulnerability or issue to be patched or mended. This period distinguishes the model from full disclosure. [1]
And full disclosure:
> Full disclosure is the practice of publishing analysis of software vulnerabilities as early as possible, making the data accessible to everyone without restriction.
Nowhere does it say that this is done "on a vendor's schedule and terms". On the contrary, unless there is some other agreement in place, the discoverer can publish any time they like; and so in reality control of the schedule is always at the discoverer's terms.
This is recognized in the XenProject's Security Response Process [2]:
> When a discoverer reports a problem to us and requests longer delays than we would consider ideal, we will honour such a request if reasonable. If a discoverer wants an accelerated disclosure compared to what we would prefer, we naturally do not have the power to insist that a discoverer waits for us to be ready and will honour the date specified by the discoverer.
Google Project Zero typically report a vulnerability and say, "We're telling everyone about this in 90 days, hope you're ready."
That is my expectation of "Responsible disclosure". If SEC Consult waited 18 months, it's either because 1) they had a contract with Fortinet of some sort, or 2) they were convinced that waiting 18 months would cause less harm to people than zero-daying everyone.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Responsible_disclosure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Responsible_disclosure
[2] https://xenproject.org/developers/security-policy/ https://xenproject.org/developers/security-policy/
- tptacek 7y agoAs I said at the top of the thread: it often makes sense to coordinate with vendors, and natural preferences often do align. But it sometimes doesn't, and, at times, it even makes sense to disclose without any coordination. Un-coordinated disclosure isn't intrinsically irresponsible, and so the term "responsible disclosure" is misleading. This isn't just my idea, and the term itself has become disfavored among vulnerability researchers.
- gwd 7y ago> Un-coordinated disclosure isn't intrinsically irresponsible, I agree with this. > and so the term "responsible disclosure" is misleading. I think this is a key point. As I said, I think "responsible" implies being responsible on both sides: neither simply publishing without sufficient time for a vendor to make a fix, nor waiting indefinitely while the vendor waffles around or tries to pretend the vulnerability doesn't exist. "Responsible disclosure" focuses (or ought to focus) on minimizing harm to users, whereas "coordinated disclosure" focuses on cooperating with the vendor. As such, "Responsible disclosure" in fact carries within itself the threat of going public if the vendor is dragging their feet, where "coordinated disclosure" doesn't. I continue to think that we should use the term "responsible disclosure", and insist that it mean actually behaving responsibly to users. [Minor edits]
- tptacek 7y agoI understand what you're trying to say. You're saying that conceptually there is such a thing as being "responsible" or "irresponsible" about disclosure, and I think that's true! The problem is that (charitably) the term of art (or uncharitably, brand) "responsible disclosure" is attached to some very specific norms, including "not releasing vulnerabilities without a patch" and "giving vendors a commercially reasonable amount of time to create a patch" and "working closely with vendors to coordinate that time window" and "redacting or carefully reducing POC code", which are not themselves universal or even generally "responsible". They're commercially responsible, to be sure! But it should not be an obligation of unpaid third party researchers to expend any effort whatsoever to be responsive to a vendor's commercial concerns. It's a nice thing to do, and some people are just preternaturally nice to vendors, and that's usually fine, but there's nothing deontologically "responsible" about that.
- erik_seaberg 7y agoNondisclosure prevents end users from mitigating an unpatched vulnerability, and only protects them if nobody else has found it.
- gwd 7y ago
- lawnchair_larry 7y agoGoogle Project Zero do not use the term “responsible disclosure” to describe this. They quite openly reject the term and do not follow “responsible disclosure”, which would prohibit then from publishing exploit details even after the fix is out, and would prevent them from disclosing that an issue even exists prior to a fix being available. The term was specifically a social engineering attempt to brand exactly what GPZ is doing as irresponsible (even though they didn’t exist at the time).
- gwd 7y agoDo you have a reference for any of this? The Wikipedia page on Responsible Disclosure lists GPZ as one of their first examples. All of the people I know in this area consider the threat of publication as a implicit part of the "responsible disclosure" process. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Responsible_disclosure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Responsible_disclosure